


Hatchetfield Halves

by LangdonSnareMD



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, StarKid Productions RPF, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Black Friday, Black Friday Spoilers, Dreams, Gen, Hatchetfield Universe, Parallel Universes, Premonition, Premonitions, Starkid - Freeform, Team Starkid Productions, The Black and White (Black Friday), The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Freeform, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals Spoilers, The Hatchetfield Universe - Freeform, alternative reality, alternative universe, hatchetfield, team starkid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LangdonSnareMD/pseuds/LangdonSnareMD
Summary: "It is 23:59 and 45 seconds when Paul huddles around Emma’s brother-in-law, waiting for a new day to roll in. He’s surrounded by people that seem familiar, in an almost intimate way, but it doesn’t seem to itch his mind enough to recognize why that’s odd.It is 11pm when Paul enters the Starlight Theatre for what he hopes is the first and last time."---There's only one shot to save the world. But the town of Hatchetfield does not play by our rules.
Relationships: Paul Matthews & Emma Perkins, Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Comments: 6
Kudos: 90





	Hatchetfield Halves

It is 23:59 and 45 seconds when Paul huddles around Emma’s brother-in-law, waiting for a new day to roll in. He’s surrounded by people that seem familiar, in an almost intimate way, but it doesn’t seem to itch his mind enough to recognize why that’s odd. He can only focus on Tom’s watch and Emma next to him. His not a girlfriend but ‘we’re more than friend’s’ person. A person that he has committed to call a part of him. 

This part of him was discreetly point towards Tom’s midsection, where the flannel and undershirt were torn and damp with blood. Implications abound, Emma holds Paul’s hand tighter as she realizes that people were indeed killing each other over a fucking plush toy. That there was a nuclear detonation in Moscow that decimated 12 million people in an instant because of this…. This what, this want? This need promised to be fulfilled by an empty divinity.

This false promise of security, of happiness.

“Five-” Paul squeezed her hand back in reassurance. He hopes to convey all the support and empathy that has been lacking in the world. A silent ‘if we can make it through this one day, we can face the world’. He glances at Emma who also watches the time intently. His thumb brushes across her knuckles to remind himself that even in a world of peril, he would only want to be here.

“Three-” Emma wishes her only worry was the strain of her sister’s death. Now, she hopes this won’t tear the only family she has left further apart from where she found it. If there will be a family left in the taters of what America has left in the last 24 hours. Nothing felt as bad as that call from her mother last Christmas eve. If it took a blazing fire to reignite her family ties, maybe this chaos is worth it. 

“Two-“ Tom sounds tired, dazed. Paul and Emma catch each other’s gaze as a shrill whooshing rushes through the air. They look up towards it but can’t glimpse at the missile before its impact.

Tom’s watch is incinerated into mere particles at 23:59 and 59 seconds.

\---

It is 11pm when Paul enters the Starlight Threatre for what he hoped was the first and final time.

By 11:10, the spores have reached his system, filling his lungs to exhale pitch perfect notes while jerking his muscles into cadenced manner. It is a fight against his own hands to let a grenade off it’s loop. His hands ache as he forces them into the pin against their will. His throat spasms as he tries to shout, to scream, roar – to do anything to break the harmonies. For a brief moment, Paul wonders if anyone else felt this pain, the tension, before they became a part of the cast.

The thought dies quickly. It does no good to dwell on what was already lost. Paul needs to focus.

Focus on fighting against the parasite slowly crawling into his skin. Focus not on Bill and his pristine body Paul last saw mangled and bloody from a gaping head wound. Not on the professor that martyred himself to disembowelment or Alice, who died alone and afraid. All the mourning is useless when the world is one stage performance away from losing free thought.

Paul focuses instead on his memories of Emma. Emma, who hated her job and this town and who could think on her feet in crisis. Who let Paul in when the world was shutting all the impurities out. Emma, who was waiting on the shore, bloodied but alive, waiting for Paul to clear the town of this disease so that they could leave and sit in silence with only their company and breaths. And that would be enough for Paul.

Emma needed Paul to destroy the meteor.

Who is he to let some blue shit stand in the way? 

As the melody clawed it’s way out of his throat, he demanded his fingers to clench the grenade. Paul rips out the pin and throws the grenade directly into the meteor’s core. He can no longer feel his arms as he spat out his hatred for musicals.

General McNamara’s watch is shattered at 11:30 as the grenade ejects the meteor and Paul off center stage and into the lifeless crowd below. There is only silence as the smoke settles in the aisle.

By 11:50, Paul stands on shaky feet, wiping away the blue cuts he had previously sustained before marching towards the chorus line waiting for him.

\---

It is 3:45am when Paul is startled awake. His eyes are heavy but his brain felt all too big within his head, as if there were more than one person residing inside. He props himself up and shivers as the blanket falls away from his chest. The chill clears his mind as he realizes he was in bed. His bed.

Paul presses his face into his pillow, allowing it to soak up the cold sweat from his forehead. But when he closes his eye, he could still see images flashing into view. Of stages and terribly perfect harmonies and green dolls and department stores. Of blood, red and blue and green and darkness and light. Tension built behind his eyes until he finally forces himself upright and into lucidity.

The images fade, his mind becomes quiet, become what can only be described as lonely.

The room is too dark to see anything, but he can only assume it looks exactly the same as it has for the past 6 years. Years of consistency, complacency to not disrupt the order. His order.

A pause, and Emma rolls towards him.

“It’s pretty early to go do nerd shit at work.” She mumbles. 

Paul grunts in return, scrubbing his face a few times before resting back down. “I’m not going anywhere, I just, y’know. Just weird dreams. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s different. Not like you to keep it to yourself.” She says.

“Okay, okay. I had a dream, or maybe two, of the world ending, but it…wasn’t normal…” Paul begins. “I mean, the world ending isn’t really normal in the first place, I guess. I mean, it’s inevitable but not something that I would be normally worrying about on a day to day basis—”

“You’re rambling.”

“Oh, okay, sorry. It was just weird. Because I was there, and you were there, but we weren’t the same, but we were. And it was okay. But it didn’t. I didn’t.” He turns to her, propped up on one elbow. “Do you think I’m thinking too much into it?”

Emma rests a hand on his forearm, stroking her thumb against his wrist. “For 4 in the morning, definitely. But if you’ll listen to me about my farm bullshit and family and dysfunctional thoughts, then we can over analyze a dream or two if it’ll give you peace of mind. I don’t want you to stress. But maybe when I can actually function. Okay?”

Paul rests close to Emma. “Okay.” She dips to rest her head on his shoulder. 

“Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> How many realities are there? Think of all the implications of not making it through the day!  
> I have another one written up of a failed day, but who knows if it'll come out.


End file.
